Extremely Long and Personal Entry. Oops?
2004-01-02
4:27 p.m.

Ah, hello. It's 2004, and do you know what that means? It means I'm going to make everyone really uncomfortable and spill about my recent miscarriage. Hooray!

Anyway, so. I was pregnant. As I was getting ready to drop Boston and pick up Tucson, I realized that I must be the most fertile person in America, because while we were only vaguely trying to get pregnant for about 14 minutes so far, my period was nowhere to be found and I was rocking the double line on the pregnancy stick and there you go: I was knocked up. We were going to be responsible adult type figure parent people, or something. Despite the fact that that is a really scary thought and a huge lifestyle overthrow, we were excited. Bonus points to the no more litter box cleaning, and a mild yuck to the no more coffee or booze thing. But, overall, completely Yay!

Since I can't keep my mouth shut about anything, I told everyone and their hampster that I was pregnant. Mostly I wanted to tell people in person before I took off for parts unknown, and partly I just can't keep a secret when it's a happy one. So, there were announcements earlier than there should have been but I figured we were healthy and I'd been taking vitamins and eating organic everything and I generally dodge bullets so no biggie. Yay, everyone is excited for grandchildren/ nieces/nephews/ general small squalling raisin faced thing to arrive. People even make vague plans to fly to Tucson in the middle of July, which would basically mean that they'd never, ever come back to visit us ever again after experiencing the heat.

And so I settle in, with no car and no internet and no job and no local friends, walking to Walgreens for fun and sleeping a lot, because holy crap I was completely exhausted. Since I'm alone all day in this corporate apartment with fake plants and abstract beige art, I take to talking to the little one. We agree that it's a girl. We buy a pregnancy journal and learn things like, "Eat lots of vitamin B26, because the fetus is forming its nipples today," and "The fetus is forming a tail. If this doesn't fall off, consider homeschooling." We write notes to the baby in the journal. We linger in the baby section in the store. We obsessively check safety records and backseat to car seat size ratios while looking for a car for me. We murmur to my stomach while falling asleep.

And then I started bleeding. Just a little at first, maybe a drop or 3 a day. Not to worry, said the midwife, this can be normal. If you start to cramp and/ or bleed heavily, go to the ER. The drip drip light spotting continues for almost a week, and then, one Saturday afternoon, I get my first cramp. I convince myself that it's actually just gas and I'm fine, it doesn't hurt much. A half hour later, there is is again. And then again and again, and then I start bleeding a bit more. We go to the ER, where for 4 hours I pretty much go through about 60% of the miscarriage in the waiting room, begging industrial sized pads off the desk staff. I finally get called back, and then wait another hour, the only advantage seemingly being that I now get to not wear pants.

The doctor finally sees me, confirms that it looks like I'm miscarrying, and then leaves again. I stare at a dead cockroach in the ceiling panel light. My husband ends up standing and leaning over me, blocking the light and the cockroach, because I'm crying and there's actually nothing else he can do but stand there. Whenever I'd heard about miscarriages, they seemed so passive, like a period at the worst but really no big deal. I'd barely made it to 8 weeks but oh my gosh, it hurt so, so much. And there was so much blood. I have what I knew would be the worst wave of cramps, and then it just dies down.

More hours pass in the ER. I get wheeled to radiology and then abandoned in a hallway on a stretcher for an hour. I consider getting up and leaving, but alas, I have no pants or any idea where said pants would be. We finally get discharged at 2 in the morning, and as a fun side note, that lovely and efficient care cost more than two thousand dollars. Wonderful.

And then I went home and cried for two days. I cried during MacGyver, during the commercial where the woman on a bus listens to her son playing the piano, when I saw the pregnancy journal. I cried when I got flowers, when I made toast, when I woke up. And then, slowly, I stopped.

I felt alone after having only the little one to chat to during the day, but slowly I started to feel relieved. Suddenly I was just me again, with no responsibility other than to just take care of myself and get better. I'd been instructed to stay off my feet for a week, which wasn't too hard because that's about how long I continued to bleed, which made me about as tired as I was when I was pregnant.

Then, slowly, I felt okay enough to go to the gym. I had a cup of coffee and didn't have to worry about hurting anyone. I told everyone that I wasn't pregnant anymore, and almost everyone told me that they'd had a miscarriage as well, or that their wife did, or their sister, or their mother. Strangely, this made me feel better. I'd been told that I'd done nothing wrong, but it's hard to accept that. I kept thinking that if I hadn't had a beer before I knew I was pregnant, or if I hadn't undertaken the heavy stress of the move, I'd be fine and still expecting in July.

I think I felt the loss more keenly than my husband. Even though we both were excited, I was the one who was always forced to think about it, with the expanding tummy and visions of kicking in the months to come. He went through it all second hand, and while he had a really hard time watching me suffer and not being able to do anything but stand there and block out the view of the cockroach and scavange for massive pads, he wasn't as attached to this specific little one. It was more of a thing to come than a thing already in the works.

I was still sad, but it's faded. I still check in and remember that I would have been 3 and a half months along today, and I avoid the baby aisle still, but I'm okay. Hopefully I'll get pregnant again, and actually manage to hang on to it, but for now I'm okay with not being pregnant right this second.

Ah, this was really, really, really long. Sorry about that. I swear I'll do something funny next. Like maybe about the cat calendar I got for Christmas. It features a kitten in a MAILBOX. Sweet. There are so many places I'd like to hang it, and all of them are imaginary (like my four year old's bedroom and my pediatric practice office waiting room).